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History

Phase I

• The counties first came together as the ‘Northwest Long-term Care Options Consortium’ (NW-LTCO) in October 2005 in response to Governor Doyle’s vision to expand Family Care statewide in 5 years, eliminate wait lists in 5 years, ensure home and community based care for those who want or need it, and create public-private partnerships to provide cost effective services on a regional basis.

• The NWLTCO applied and received a $100,000 planning grant in February 2006 to design a regional system of long-term care.

• A number of activities and a lot of work went into the 16-month planning initiative. Consumers and advocates were added to the Consortium, town hall meetings and provider, consumer and policy maker forums and summits were held, web site and news releases were developed to provide ongoing information and education, studying issues and options regarding managed care, benefit packages, governance models, service and business models were completed, and a series of county board resolutions were passed to support and sustain the planning initiative.

• Upon the completion of the initial planning phase in September 2007, a number of decisions or outcomes were reached by NWLTCO Consortium. They were:

- Create a public managed care organization (MCO)
- Create a Long-term Care District
- Provide the Family Care benefit package
- Serve frail elderly, physically and developmentally disabled persons
- Develop a network of four sub-regional Aging and Disability Resource Centers.

Phase I Final Report & Attachments

Phase II

• ‘Phase II - Planning to Implement’ (PTI) - began in October 2007 with additional State funding.

• A Family Care Development Team and Contractors carried out the day to day work of implementing the PTI plan.

• The Management Group (TMG) is the primary Managed Care Development Contractor. TMG is focusing on MCO operations, business infrastructure plannning, care management and quality management system design.

• The Family Care Development Director and staff worked with local stakeholders on provider network development, care management, stakeholders communications, ‘rollout’ planning and implementation.
• ADRC planning continued at the county and regional level through two single county and two multi-county clusters.

• The PTI plan called for developing the governance and operations aspects of the MCO with a goal of submitting a Request for Proposal (RFP) response to the State in summer, 2008.

• Family Care implementation is targeted for March 2009.

• ADRC planning and implementation will be concurrent with the MCO planning with start-up at least 2 months before MCO enrollment.